Web Pages to Include in Your Site - Important Details
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Your web site's navigation and search should help users find the appropriate resources they need from your web site, but it's almost inevitable that someone is going to look for something that isn't there. Maybe you never built a page like the one they're looking for; maybe they made a typo; maybe you've overhauled your site so that the link they followed no longer exists. You can probably think of other reasons a user might run into problems when trying to find something on your site. For all these reasons, you should have a custom 404 page.
Many web sites serve their visitors generic 404 pages when they can't figure out what the user wants. The problem with a generic page is that it does nothing to help users find what they want. You can offer site navigation links and/or a search box on your 404 page. You can Google “custom 404 page” for advice on how to build a 404 page; you'll also find links to some funny 404 pages if you need some inspiration.
Do you plan to collect any information at all from users of your web site? If you do, you need to tell them what you plan to do with that information. This means you need to build a page with your privacy policy. I can't advise you here, since I am not a lawyer. But you will probably want to sit down with one to find out what you need to include in your policy, and what you can and cannot do, legally, with the information you collect. Some of the rules are pretty arcane, especially if you expect to have visitors under the age of 18. Better safe than sorry!
Speaking of collecting sensitive information from your users, if you do that at all, you're also going to need a secure page, and you're going to need to document your security procedures. David Mertz, writing for IBM Developerworks, notes that it's a good idea to “Give some contact information on this page in case users have questions, or perhaps have useful improvements to suggest.”
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